Behind Her Eyes

Truman Capote (1924 – 1984), born Truman Streckfus Persons, was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood. His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television dramas.

Molly Giles’ newest collection of short stories, Wife with Knife, recently won the Leap Frog Fiction Contest. She has published four previous prize-winning collections: Rough Translations, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Boston Globe Award, and the the Bay Area Book Reviewers’ Award; Creek Walk, which won the Small Press Best Fiction Award, the California Commonwealth Silver Medal for Fiction, and was a New York Times Notable Book; Bothered, which won the Split Oak Press Flash Fiction Award; and All the Wrong Places, which won the Spokane Prize for Fiction. She has also published a novel, Iron Shoes, and an ebook of stories, Three for the Road. Her work has been included in numerous anthologies including the O.Henry and Pushcart Prize, and she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Marin Arts Council, and the Arkansas Arts Council.

Arian Moayed is the Co-founder & Board Chair of Waterwell, a civic-minded and socially-conscious theater and education company, as well as a partner at the for-profit Waterwell Films. Most recently with Waterwell, Moayed arranged the transcripts of a deportation proceeding called The Courtroom, now a feature film in pre-production. He wrote and directed the Emmy-nominated series The Accidental Wolf. Notable acting credits include a dual-language Hamlet, The Humans, for which he won a Drama Desk Award, his Obie Award-winning role in Guards at the Taj, and his Tony-nominated turn in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. Moayed can be seen in HBO’s Succession, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Inventing Anna.

Parker Posey has appeared in many independent films—Broken English, Price Check, Party Girl, The House of Yes, Fay Grimm, Clockwatchers, and Columbus—to name a few. Most people know her from the Christopher Guest movies, such as Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. She’s done a few Hollywood movies like Superman Returns, Blade Trinity, and Josie and the Pussycats. She published her first book, You’re on an Airplane, which became a national best seller. From 2018 - 21, she starred in the reboot of Lost in Space. Posey was featured on Dick Wolf’s podcast, Hunted, and her forthcoming projects include The Parenting, Disappointment Blvd., The Staircase, and Bream Gives Me Hiccups.

Karen Pittman is best known for featured roles on And Just Like That..., The Morning Show, The Americans, Marvel’s Luke Cage, Yellowstone, Living with Yourself, and Homeland. Her numerous stage credits include Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced, for which she received the 2015 Theatre World Award, and Pipeline, for which she was nominated for Lucille Lortel and Broadway League’s Distinguished Performance awards. Pittman will appear in the forthcoming films What We Do Next and Allies.

Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, and Swing Time, as well as the novella The Embassy of Cambodia and three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free, and Intimations. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Smith was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002 and was listed as one of Granta's 20 Best Young British Novelists in 2003 and again in 2013. White Teeth won multiple literary awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Guardian First Book Award. On Beauty was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and NW was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, which was adapted to film in 2018, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and has also published books for young readers, most recently a picture book, Millions of Maxes. Wolitzer is a faculty member in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive in the novel. She is excited to be the new host of the literary radio show and podcast Selected Shorts.

CREDITS

“A Lamp in a Window” by Truman Capote, from Music for Chameleons (Random House, 1980). Copyright © 1980 by Truman Capote. Used by permission of The Truman Capote Literary Trust.

“What Do You Say?” by Molly Giles, from Rough Translations (University of Georgia Press, 1985). Copyright © 1985 by Molly Giles. Used by permission of the author.

“Crazy They Call Me,” by Zadie Smith, from The New Yorker (March 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Zadie Smith. Used by permission of Rogers Coleridge and White, Ltd.